10 Best Free Backlog Management Tools 2023
Good backlog management is key to the success of your project or product. It allows for focused work, clear priorities, and fewer unknowns when it comes to teamwork. To succeed at this task, the product owner needs to have experience, implement good backlog management practices, and employ tools that will help with the process. Today, I am looking at the latter, to see which backlog management tools will help you deliver the most value.
At the top here, you will see an overview of all backlog management tools discussed in the post. The comparison table allows you to overview the main features and attributes. Later, each tool is discussed in more detail.
Best Backlog Management Tools Comparison
| Teamhood | Pivotal Tracker | Monday | Airfocus | JIRA | Asana | Hansoft | ClickUp | Yodiz | Backlog | |
| Kanban View | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| List View | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Kanban Swimlanes | ✅ | ✅ | ||||||||
| RICE, ICE, or custom formulas | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ||||||
| Custom Prioritization | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ||
| Item Dependencies | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Item Tags | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Collaboration Features | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Integrations | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Free version | Unlimited | Up to 5 users | Up to 2 users | Not available | Up to 10 users | Up to 15 users | Trial | Unlimited | Up to 3 users | Not available |
Criteria for the Best Backlog Management Tools
To select the best backlog management tools on the market, let’s go by a certain set of criteria. All of which are closely related to the backlog management process and the features it requires. Following is the feature list used for this comparison:
- Several views to visualize data for different meetings/perspectives (Kanban, List)
- Customization of those views to represent the process (statuses, rows/swimlanes)
- Formulas to calculate RICE, ICE, or similar scoring
- Item dependencies for item relation mapping
- Item tags for categorization
- Collaboration features
- Integrations
These are the key features discussed in the post and used for comparing the following tools. While not all tools carry all of these features, all have the majority set required for backlog management.
1. Teamhood
Teamhood is a visual project management tool that allows you to track the Agile process from start to finish. Complete with a flexible and fully customizable Kanban board, Gantt chart, Workload management, and live reports, this is a powerhouse for any Agile team.
By using this tool, you will be able to visualize and prioritize the backlog items in multiple views – Kanban, List, and Gantt. Allowing you to choose how to portray the information in different circumstances, such as different backlog meetings. Teamhood also allows you to add various predefined and custom information to ensure there is enough context for each item. As well as the option to create custom prioritization techniques and calculate your RICE or other score.
Top backlog management features:
- Interchangeable visualization options (Kanban, List, Gantt views)
- Custom prioritization setup (priority columns, item categorization, custom item fields)
- Formulas to calculate RICE, ICE, and other techniques
- Item dependencies within one or several boards
- Easy categorization via tags, Swimlanes, and custom fields
- Various collaboration features
Price: Free plan available for unlimited users, professional plans start at €9 per user/month.
2. Pivotal Tracker
Pivotal Tracker is a product backlog management tool designed specifically for software development teams. As such, it offers a more developer-oriented interface and features that allow for software product planning. Other teams may find this tool a bit too complicated as the interface is not beginner-friendly. Pivotal tracker offers quite a few backlog management features as well as an open API.
Top backlog management features:
- Environment optimized for software development
- Various integration opportunities
- Collaboration features
Price: Free for up to 5 users, then $10 per user/month.
Pivotal Tracker user reviews on G2
3. Monday
Monday is a work management solution that offers backlog management as part of its feature set. Here you can review the initiatives and prioritize them with the help of custom fields, such as effort, impact, and user votes. While Monday is not a fully-featured project management platform, it will offer a visual way to prioritize and organize the backlog for smaller teams.
Top backlog management features:
- Custom fields allow adding important information for the proposed items
- RICE metric can be used (without automated calculation)
- Integrations with other solutions
Price: Free for up to 2 users, then €8 per user/month.
4. Airfocus
Airfocus is a product backlog management software designed for product teams. Here, you can visualize tasks in Kanban and List views, as well as define dependencies and categorize them with tags. This tool offers a specialized priority chart that helps determine which tasks to take next. You will also be able to add customer insights for more context.
Top backlog management features:
- Built-in priority chart for easier evaluation
- Customer insights integration
- Integrations with other PM solutions
Price: Starts at $19 per user/month.
5. JIRA
JIRA is a work-tracking software for large IT organizations. While it is used by companies in other fields, the features found in this tool are optimized for IT projects. Here, you will be able to switch between several views for backlog management and task execution. There is also a way to implement RICE scoring by using visual custom fields. However, JIRA lacks when it comes to Kanban visualization and categorization of items on a Kanban board.
Top backlog management features:
- Multiple views to use for backlog management
- RICE scoring implementation
- IT focused features
- System calibrated for IT teams
Price: Free for up to 10 users, then $7.75 per user/month.
6. Asana
Asana is a work management platform that allows you to manage tasks and prioritize initiatives easily. Designed for creative teams and projects, this tool can also be applied to backlog management needs. Use the backlog management template to create a board that will hold all of your backlog items. You can prioritize and assign story points there before moving the items into the next Sprint.
Top backlog management features:
- Option to switch between Kanban and List views depending on the context
- Item dependencies to ease planning
- Item tags to categorize
- Story points to evaluate workload
- Collaboration features for the team
Price: Free for up to 15 users, then €10.99 per user/month.
7. Hansoft
Hansoft is an enterprise product backlog management tool for teams looking to improve their collaboration. This enterprise option allows teams to add a great level of detail as well as provides out-of-the-box reports and a tracking dashboard. While not particularly friendly for day-to-day work, Hansoft allows one to easily add and review the information within the tool itself. Which may be preferred by the stakeholders.
Top backlog management features:
- Detailed List view
- Visual reporting dashboard
Price: Free trial available.
8. ClickUp
ClickUp is a visual productivity platform that offers backlog management tools as part of its package. Here, you can visualize items in the list and Kanban views, as well as assign priorities and estimate complexity. CilckUp allows you to visualize RICE scoring through custom fields, but there is no automated calculation of the final RICE score.
Top backlog management features:
- Visualization of tasks in multiple views
- Rice calculation through custom fields
- Collaboration features for the team
Price: Free version available.
9. Yodiz
Yodiz is an Agile backlog management tool that aims to guide you through the process from planning to initiation. Here you will be able to visualize and prioritize items in a list type of view. Providing you with additional details on items as well as the priority score from 1 to 10.
Yodiz is best suited for technical users that want backlog management software for the Scrum process.
Top backlog management features:
- Detailed List view for backlog prioritization
- Kanban view with predefined swimlanes
- Built-in prioritization feature
Price: Free for up to 3 users, then €5 per user/month.
10. Backlog
Backlog is a collaboration tool that offers backlog management for its users. Contrary to other tools on this list, Backlog is not an Agile-focused tool. This means it offers limited Agile features and there are no advanced options to choose from.
Despite this limitation, Backlog offers plenty of features for effective backlog management, such as task prioritization, dependencies, and others.
Top backlog management features:
- Item dependencies to visualize the relationships
- Customizable prioritization
- Collaboration features
Price: Starts at $30 per month.
Summary
Backlog management tools are ofter solutions fit for the overall project management process. To pick the one that is best suited for your team, make sure to have a clear list of priorities and think about what other actions you will want to perform with the chosen tool.
Passionate content marketer looking to bring better solutions to the project management space.
2020 - Present Marketing specialist at Teamhood.
2014 - 2020 Marketing manager for Eylean.
